In the Public Interest

Can the Congressional Democrats draw a bright line between themselves and the Republicans over what needs to be done about corporate crime in the eight weeks before the November elections? At first thought, the answer should be easy. The Republicans and their “whatever corporations want” subservient stance during the Nineties reached levels somewhere between unconditional…

Workers and consumers these days could echo Rodney Dangerfield’s line about not getting any respect. Labor Day has come and gone with very little mention of its significance by the major newspapers or the television networks. It is not for lack of news. Non-union labor has been slipping behind in their inflation adjusted wages since…

Ever since the first public transit — a ferryboat near Boston in 1630 — got underway, a Broad variety of carriers have emerged — buses, trolleybuses, vanpools, jitneys, heavy and light rail, cable cars, monorails, tramways and automated guideway transit. Rarely did these transports ever attract private investment — that was reserved for The Car…

There are times when comparisons matter a lot. Just compare Congress and its self-voted forthcoming salary increase from $150,000 to $155,000 a year with the federal minimum of $5.15 per hour that Congress has frozen for years. Since 1989, members of Congress have granted themselves a total of $60,500 in raises. This is much more…

When the current Congress convened last year there were lots of promises to curb predatory lenders that peddle credit on outrageous terms to poor, elderly and unsophisticated borrowers. Not only is Congress reneging on its promises, but it is rushing to reward the lenders whose scams have devastated low, moderate and middle income families and…

Once again the Congressional toadies for the auto industry have beaten back efforts by legislators such as Democrat, Senator John Kerry and Republican John McCain to gradually increase fuel efficiency standards from the abysmally wasteful levels now inflicted on your pocketbook. Instead of choosing the path of reduced pollution, consumer savings, efficiency of engines and…

The Enron scandal-followed by revelations about World Com and other corporate shenanigans-has produced a lot of instant experts who for the first time are actually finding fault with the ethics of the nation’s biggest enterprises. For Tony Mazzocchi this must seem a strange turn of events. For decades, Mazzocchi has sounded the alarms about corporate…

Last week Citigroup, the nation’s largest financial services holding company, trotted out one of its top executives, Robert Rubin, to spread some soothing words about how to clean up the corporate scandals and repair the sagging stock market. Rubin’s (and Citigroup’s) message appeared as a lengthy op-ed in the Washington Post under the headline “To…

This year marks the 55th anniversary of the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act, one of the great blows to American democracy. The Act, which was drafted by employers, fundamentally infringed on workers’ human rights. Legally, it impeded employees’ right to join together in labor unions, it undermined the power of unions to represent workers’ interests…

All the headlines about corporate disclosures and the need for transparency are sending shivers through the banking industry and its regulators who have always lived in a protected and largely secret world. Hundreds of millions of dollars are expended on examinations of depository institutions, but most of the key findings are treated as inside information…